


we'll speak in our secret tongues

by sabrinachill



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Flirting, M/M, Mental Institution, abnormal fixation on shoelaces, art therapy, botched amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 07:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14666148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrinachill/pseuds/sabrinachill
Summary: Quentin misses tying his shoes.It’s stupid, really - it’s not like any of them held any sort of special, sentimental value or anything - but it was part of the ritual. The being-a-functional-adult morning ritual of shower, shit, and shave (with a real, actual razor) and then dressing in his own clothes, ones that have belts in the pants and strings in the hoods and laces in the shoes.****a time loop wherein Quentin is expelled, and Eliot comes to bring him homefor The Welters Challenge, week 3





	we'll speak in our secret tongues

Quentin misses tying his shoes.

It’s stupid, really - it’s not like any of them held any sort of special, sentimental value or anything - but it was part of the ritual. The being-a-functional-adult morning ritual of shower, shit, and shave (with a real, actual razor) and then dressing in his own clothes, ones that have belts in the pants and strings in the hoods and laces in the shoes.

Maybe it’s just that he spends a lot of time staring at his feet lately. (He finds it easier to focus on that whole “one step at a time” approach to dealing with his illness if he thinks of it literally.) So it feels like just another of the universe’s multitudes of tiny injustices that being stuck in the mental institution coincides with having to wear slip-on sneakers.

Like a child, or a prisoner. Like someone who can’t be trusted with their own wellbeing.

Because if he had laces, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t hurt himself with them. At least, that’s what they say.

It’s been eight days and he’s been meticulously following his doctor’s instructions. Taking the medication, going to the therapy sessions. Trying to take it seriously. And he feels…well, not better, really, but _less_ , maybe. Quieter. Hazier. He can get out of bed and shuffle through his daily schedule without any more of the hallucinations, but he still isn’t sleeping well.

So he lies there, listening to his roommate snore, and watches the weak, gray light of dawn seep through the cheap blinds. And he thinks about his shoes.

And then he gets up, changes from the hospital-issued patient scrubs he sleeps in to the ones he wears during the day, and pushes his feet into those stupid slip-on sneakers. The entire outfit is the same shade of faded seafoam green as the paint on the walls and tile on the floor. His hair hangs limp and tangled around his stubbly cheeks and he has no idea how he’s ever supposed to feel better about himself when this is his life.

The monochromatic monotony of institutionalized mental healthcare.

He takes the little paper shot glass piled with pills that are a half-assed attempt to fix his broken brain and then shuffles into the dayroom for art therapy. He’s absolute crap at it but it’s still his favorite part of the day.

Because this is the only place where he lets himself indulge in the hallucinations that landed him in here.

(This time around, anyway.)

He chooses his easel - one at the back of the room, on the edge of the group, so he can avoid the other patients - and flips to a fresh page. He spins the charcoal through his fingers a few times, palming it and then making it appear in the other hand, a reflex from all his years practicing card tricks and close-up magic illusions, before he starts to sketch.

It’s the same thing every time - a whimsical cottage at the edge of a wood, with a tall, dark-haired man leaning in the doorway.

Smiling at Quentin.

“I hate to say it, but this is not a great look for you, Q. If this is your new aesthetic, I’m beginning to see why they’re keeping you locked in here.”

Quentin shouldn’t recognize the voice, but he does.

(He also shouldn’t enjoy hearing it, but, well…)

Still, he grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes together and shakes his head, once, hard. “No,” he mutters, voice hard but brittle, like sun-baked bones scattered across desert sand. “You are not here. I’m taking my meds, I’m getting better, and you. are. NOT. here.”

Eliot shrugs, a movement designed to showcase that carefully-practiced elegant nonchalance of his. (Quentin shouldn’t recognize that, either, but he does.) “I don’t know, Q. Denying reality doesn’t sound like the act of a healthy mind.”

“ _That’s exactly my point. You’re not real. Nothing about this is real_ ,” Quentin hisses, loud enough that he’s drawn the attention of Dr. Richard.

“Shit,” he mutters, and starts violently shading in a tree, taking deep breaths. He’s doing his art. He’s stabilizing. He’s definitely _not_  talking to the hallucination.

“And how are you doing today, Quentin?” Richard asks, drifting over and nearly walking straight into the invisible Eliot, who gracefully slides out of the way at the last second.

“I’m good, Dr. Richard.”

“Drawing that house, again, I see. What do you think it means that you keep sketching this place, Quentin?”

Quentin hates how psychologists like to repeat his name back to him. It’s meant to be comforting, to create intimacy and familiarity, but it just feels like they think he’s too crazy to remember his own goddamned name.

But he takes another slow breath and swallows his bitter annoyance, deciding to try honesty instead. He’s respecting the process. He’s getting better. (And if he tells himself that enough times, maybe it will be true.) “I think it means that I’m searching for a home.”

“I think that’s a wonderful insight, Quentin. You’re making tremendous progress.” Richard touches his shoulder with his weak little clammy fingers and smiles, clearly delighted with himself and his astounding powers of artistic therapy.

Quentin nods and tries to smile back, but he doesn’t fully exhale until Richard’s moved on to the other side of the room.

“You already have a home, Q,” Eliot says, with quiet, uncharacteristic earnestness. “I’m sorry it took me so long, but I’m here to take you back there.”

“Please, just go away,” Quentin mutters, exhausted, fighting through the fog of the medication. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Unfortunately, right now is all we have. You don’t belong here, Quentin. You have your bad episodes, sure, but you don’t hallucinate. This…” Eliot takes a deep breath and gestures, encompassing both Quentin’s current state and the institution as a whole. “This is all my fault. You were expelled, and I found that I couldn’t bear the idea of you forgetting me. So I did one tiny little casting. I thought it would be harmless, but it interacted with Fogg’s memory wipe somehow, and, well, here we are.”

Eliot rests his hand on Quentin’s shoulder, in much the same way that Richard did, but the two feel utterly dissimilar. It’s like comparing the experience of licking a 9-volt battery to playing double dutch with a pair of live power lines.

Quentin tries to remember to breathe.

So Eliot ducks a bit and waits, quietly staring, forcing Quentin to finally meet his eyes. They’re dark and sparkling, even here, under the hospital’s harsh fluorescent lights. Looking into them makes Quentin feel as he’s slipped from the grasp of gravity and time itself, and he’s slowly drifting upward into last night’s sky.

“What I did… it was stupid and selfish, and I’m sorry. It made your brain fight to both forget and remember the exact same thing at the exact same time, which may have crossed a wire or two, but I promise you, I’m not a hallucination. Nothing has been; what you’ve been seeing were simply _memories_. I should have checked on you sooner, but I didn’t realize the spells would interact like that, or that it would lead you to a place like this so quickly.”

Quentin looks away, huffing humorlessly. “Yeah, well, I’ve got priors.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, staring down at his feet. Those stupid slip-ons. Then he catches up to what Eliot said. “Wait, what do you mean, spells?” 

Eliot grins; he’s relieved to have the earnest apology speech over with, since he finds talking about his feelings about as enjoyable as scrubbing toilets in a public restroom after an E. coli outbreak. 

But now there’s nothing left but the fun part, where he’s got the hook set, and just has to reel Quentin in. “The magical variety of spells,” he says, sliding his hand up to toy with the ends of Quentin’s unbrushed hair. “The real kind. Because we can do magic, Q, and it’s what’s going to get us out of here.”

He steps a fraction closer, close enough that Quentin can feel Eliot’s body heat on his skin, close enough that his head starts to fill with static, like a radio tuned to a station far out of its range.

“The plan is foolproof,” Eliot continues, his voice pitched low and soft. “The way Alice explained it, if you stay close enough to me, the spell that’s making me invisible will cover you, too. So we’re just going to snuggle close together and waltz right out the front door.”

Quentin shakes his head, just a little, careful to make a small enough movement that he doesn’t draw Dr. Richard’s attention again. “So I’m supposed to believe that a mysterious stranger - the exact one I hallucinate about, actually - shows up out of nowhere, tells me he’s here to save me, and all I have to do is cuddle up with him a little and then I’m free?”

“Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Quentin mutters. “It sounds like a delusional fantasy.”

Eliot’s eyes narrow a little, analyzing him like he’s some rare strain of bacteria in a petri dish. “Except that your brain doesn’t give you happy fantasies, does it, Q? It doesn’t do _nice_  things for you.”

Quentin stops short, the charcoal nearly snapping in his fingers, only half the shingles on the cottage sketched in. The truth - the real truth - is that his brain didn’t _used_  to let him have nice things. It was never anything but a constant, self-fulfilling cycle of anxiety and self-loathing and various shades of misery until two weeks ago, when he first thought he saw Eliot.

He’d been sitting in his tiny apartment, drinking PBR and eating Cheetos in his boxers while watching an old episode of Star Trek, when a gorgeous man had suddenly walked across his living room. He'd been impeccably dressed, wearing khakis, a white shirt, and a tweed vest. He didn’t speak, didn’t do anything, really, except take a drag on his cigarette, saunter _through_  the couch somehow, and then lean against the far wall.

But looking at him, Quentin had felt his heart squeeze and leap in a way he didn’t know it was capable of anymore. It was like a rusted hunk of abandoned machinery being forced back into action, clanking and groaning and screeching its protest the whole way.

And then before he could process anything beyond that, the hallucination disappeared, almost as quickly as it started.

But it didn’t matter. Quentin felt like his busted brain had finally started to atone for all those years of pain, bringing him a gift, almost, with someone beautiful and charming that literally walked right into his life.

It wasn’t until later that he realized just how crazy that thought was.

He’d seen Eliot dozens of times since then, both before and after he’d checked himself in for treatment, but it was always like the first sighting - fleeting, and one-sided. The hallucination never actually talked _back_  to Quentin; he’s never had a real conversation with it before. And it was always a little fuzzier than this Eliot, less vibrant, and definitely not tactile.

All of which leads Quentin to the conclusion that something is vastly, vitally different this time.

So, on the off chance that this Eliot is actually a real man, Quentin isn’t going to risk saying any of that “you’re the only bright spot I’ve ever had in my entire sad little life and I've got a theory that it's just karma to balance out my depression” stuff out loud.

Instead, he simply replies, “That’s true.”

“Therefore, I must be real. Here,” Eliot says, after a quick glance around to ensure that no one is paying attention to them. “Let me show you.”

He carefully pulls Quentin to him, one long arm draping around thin shoulders, and leans down until his lips are brushing against the shell of Quentin’s ear.

Quentin can’t help it; he shivers, just a little.

“Stay silent, and hold onto me,” Eliot whispers.

Quentin only hesitates for a second before wrapping his arm around the hard line of Eliot’s waist. This seems crazy - this _is_  crazy - but Eliot just feels so _real_. He’s warm and solid and hard, with ridiculously good posture and a cleft in his chin. There's the ghost of a five o’clock shadow haunting his sharp jaw and an errant curl falling over his forehead. He smells like mint and aftershave and bourbon; Quentin can hear his strong, steady heartbeat through his chest. 

And Quentin is starting to think that even _his_  imagination isn't quite good enough to make someone like Eliot up.

Still, he shouldn’t be doing this, not any of it, because he knows a sane person wouldn’t. This is most likely just a very vivid conjuring of his subconscious and further evidence that he needs more treatment.

Like, a _shitload_  more treatment.

But then, all the medication and therapy have done is make him feel numb and put him in terrible shoes, whereas the sexy hallucination wants to take him out into the world and show him _magic_.

So Quentin nods, and they head for the door. 

He stumbles a bit when they start walking, trying to match his strides to Eliot’s longer ones, but they find their rhythm soon enough.

And true to Eliot’s word, despite all Quentin’s previously-held beliefs about biology and physics and reality itself, it does seem that they’re actually invisible. No one looks at them, no one calls out or tries to stop them. A couple of people do nearly walk into them, but not purposefully - they’re just moving down a hall that they think is empty.

So Quentin is freaking the fuck out, and he can’t decide if it’s in a good or bad way. Because either his mental state is far worse than he’d ever thought, or magic - and Eliot - are actually real.

He squeezes a little tighter, pressing his fingertips into the silky fabric of Eliot’s vest. Eliot smiles and absently rubs at Quentin’s shoulder, sending little electric zings of excitement all down Quentin’s left side.

It’s a good freak-out, Quentin decides. Definitely good.

They walk out the front door on the heels of a night nurse going home for the day, with no one suspecting a thing.

And just like that, they’re blinking in the sunshine, breathing air that smells like something other than bleach and piss and sadness.

Stunned, Quentin tries to run the fingers of his free hand through his hair, but it catches on tangles halfway through. He lets it drop back to his side, his fingers twitching. “That worked. I can’t believe that actually worked. It was like… well, uh, it was like magic.”

Eliot holds him close and they keep walking, wanting to get out of sight of the hospital’s windows. “That would be because it was. Real magic.”

“Okay, but why would you do that for me? Why go to all that trouble?”

Eliot seems to need a minute to respond, silently leading Quentin to a sleek, black Mercedes SUV in the employee parking lot before turning to face him, his hands gripping Quentin’s shoulders, and drawing a deep breath.

“Look, I realize that I said I wouldn’t tell you the truth when I found you, that this reunion was supposed to be a simple lift-the-spirits seduction, but I’m afraid circumstances have changed.” Eliot’s thumb strokes absently over Quentin’s collarbone; Quentin’s brain stopped functioning when Eliot said the word “seduction.” “We need your help, Q. Because we are monumentally fucked, and not in the fun way.”

Quentin frowns, looking at the perfectly coiffed man in front of him, and then back to his own elastic-waist pants and slip-on sneakers. He can smell his unwashed hair where it hangs in his face. “Uh, I can’t even be trusted with shoelaces and basic hygiene right now, so whatever your problem is, I’m pretty sure I can’t help.”

“There’s that tragic lack of self-confidence I know and loathe. One of these days I’m going to make you see yourself through my eyes.” Quentin raises his eyebrows and Eliot shrugs. “Literally. There’s a spell for it. But, let’s tackle the simpler, less psychologically-fraught problems first. Like transportation. We need to get out of here.”

He removes his hands from Quentin’s shoulders - and Quentin doesn’t feel the loss like a kick to the gut, he _doesn’t_  - and twists his long fingers through a rapid, complicated series of movements, at least three of which seem to defy Quentin’s understanding of the limits of human anatomy.

And the SUV in front of them unlocks. Another few finger flicks and the engine roars to life, and then Eliot waves an elegant hand at the driver’s seat, which seems to adjust itself to accommodate someone of Quentin’s exact height. “If you don’t mind.”

“What? No. I can’t drive; I never learned how. I’m a New Yorker.”

“Well, shit,” Eliot says, lightly, adjusting his tie. “I portaled in, but, thanks to the wards, the spell to portal back within a couple hundred miles of Brakebills is absurdly complicated. I haven’t quite mastered it yet.”

“Can’t you drive us?”

Dramatically, Eliot sighs, his whole body deflating slightly. “The only thing I’ve ever driven is a tractor.”

In the last hour, Quentin has been invisible, learned magic is real, and watched a gorgeous stranger attempt grand theft auto with nothing but a few flicks of his fingers. But what Eliot just said tops the list of most surprising things he’s experienced today. 

“I’m sorry, what? _You_  were on a _tractor_?”

Eliot gives him a furtive, sideways look, like for once in his life he said something he hadn’t rehearsed. “Never mind that. You really can’t drive this?”

Quentin shakes his head. “No. Sorry.”

Eliot closes the car door, but seems to forget to turn off the engine. “Well, what do we do now?”

* * *

He’s not happy with the answer.

“This is definitely not what I had in mind.”

They’re ten miles outside the city, squished together on an ancient bus. The shocks are shot and every pothole bounces them half into the air and knocks Eliot’s head against the window; there’s a spring loose in the seat that’s poking Quentin in his left nut. 

“Well, it’s still better than where I was an hour ago,” Quentin replies.

“But I had this whole spectacular, heroic, knight-riding-in-on-a-white-horse thing going. It’s nowhere near as effective being a knight-on-a-dingy-Greyhound.”

Quentin smiles. “You’re still a knight, though.”

“Well, obviously,” Eliot says, straightening his cuffs. “And now I need you to be one too.”

And he proceeds to fill Quentin the fuck in. 

* * *

“Hold up. Fillory is _real_?”

“Honestly, I tell you that you used to be a student at a secret school that teaches magic, that you had your memory erased - mostly erased, anyway, since I sort of fucked that up - and now an evil beast is hunting all of your friends. But the part of the story that’s throwing you is that a place in a book you like actually exists?”

“No. It all sounds insane, for sure, but the Fillory part is what’s making me think that this might just be a hallucination after all. Because of course I’d believe Fillory is real. And that I somehow know people who can go there.”

“ _Have_  gone there, by now,” Eliot says, checking his pocket watch. “The Fillory connection is relatively new information. There was a second attack, just after you left. Twelve students died and one of the outbuildings was, well, I think the best word would be 'evaporated.' But Alice was able to determine that the Beast had something to do with Fillory, so we tracked down a magic button that allows travel back and forth. We don't know how much time we have left, or what to expect over there, so the others decided to travel over and do some reconnaissance while I retrieved you. That’s why we need you, Quentin - if anyone knows some obscure thing about Fillory that’s going to allow us to defeat the Beast, it’s you. We’re going to meet everyone back at the school to come up with a plan.”

“And that’s where we’re going now. Your secret magic school. Like an American Hogwarts.”

“An American Hogwarts for inebriated pansexual adults, but sure.”

Quentin sighs. “I should have stayed in the institution.”

“Because you were having so much more fun with your little arts and crafts projects before I whisked you away to go on a thrilling adventure with me?”

“Because I obviously belong there, since I’m actually choosing to believe you.”

Eliot hooks his arm around Quentin’s neck, smiling with delight. “Excellent. Now we can start figuring out how we’re going to find our way back to campus.”

* * *

And Quentin thinks they have a decent plan by the time they get off the bus. Eliot stops it (telekinetically, which is just _crazy_ ) on the side of the road close to where he thinks Brakebills is, and they’re just going to walk the rest of the way in on foot.

Easy.

But after more than an hour tromping through the thick forest, sweating and swatting insects and stumbling over roots, he’s starting to think that Eliot has overstated its simplicity a tad.

Quentin swears and stops to detangle his hair from yet another poky branch. He’s itchy and disheveled, with tiny scratches everywhere, a wasp sting on his ass, and dirt on his hands, knees, and streaked across one cheek from when he twisted his ankle and fell in a mud puddle half a mile back. 

Eliot still looks like he walked out of a Victorian-themed issue of _GQ_. 

“How the hell is that possible?” Quentin grumbles, scanning Eliot for one small sign of imperfection and coming up tragically short.

Eliot glances down at himself and smiles appreciatively, plucking a speck of invisible lint from his trousers. “Magic, of course. There are spells to maintain all of this.”

“Of course. And those are the ones you bothered to learn. Not the spells that would allow you to actually _get back_  to the _place where you live_ , but the ones that will keep you pretty while you wander aimlessly around the forest until you die.”

“Naturally.”

Quentin rolls his eyes and stomps past him. 

Eliot smirks. “So you noticed that I’m pretty, huh?”

“Shut up.”

* * *

When they finally slip through the wards, it’s completely by accident. One second Quentin is staring at unending forest, gripped in the throes of despair, imagining what his stupid shoes will taste like when he’s starving to death in this wilderness and forced to eat them; the next, he’s standing at the edge of a long expanse of meticulously manicured lawn.

 “See?” Eliot says, breezing past him. “I told you it would be easy.”

Quentin resists the urge to chuck a pinecone at his head. Barely.

The campus seems half-empty, the few people they pass clutching their books to their chests and hurrying along with nervous, sidelong glances. Still, it looks like a nice place, and one that Quentin’s certain he’s seen before, somewhere.

Maybe Eliot has been telling the truth all along. Maybe he really does belong here. Despite himself, Quentin feels some of the tension that he perpetually carries begin to melt, sliding from his shoulders.

He even hazards a smile.

* * *

Of course, it all goes to hell the second they reach the Physical Cottage. 

Eliot tries the door, only to find it’s locked. Strange. It’s never locked; on days when the weather is decent, it’s not even usually _closed_. He hums, disapproving and a bit confused, before attempting an unlocking spell.

Nothing. It’s like his first day here all over again.

“Really, we’re making me jump through this hoop again? It’s ridiculous; I’m hardly a first year.” He sighs, seeming somehow tragically insulted, before rolling his sleeves up and doing a few quick, complicated gestures that pull the pins from the hinges. The door hovers for a second, as if surprised at its sudden lack of support, then falls inward with an earsplitting crash. 

“Hello?” Eliot calls, escorting Quentin across the threshold with a hand on his back before putting the door back in place with another flick of his wrist. The house is cool and dark, dust motes twirling through the last rays of orange sunlight filtering through the open drapes. “Everyone back from their epic fantasy quest? Anyone bone a centaur or bring back some sort of premium Fillorian absinthe or something?”

Silence.

Quentin bends over the nearest stack of books, silently reading the spines. _Beginners Guide to Phosphoromancy. Poppers Positions Volume 3. Advanced Incantations for Spontaneous Combustion_.

He has the strangest sense of deja vu. 

It seems like a delusion, like a fever dream. Like a place he’s only read about in a book or seen on a screen.

And he never wants to be anywhere else again. 

“Oh, right,” Eliot murmurs, drifting over to him. “You’re inside the wards again, so the memory charm is losing its grip. I can get rid of it now.”

He moves his hands over Quentin’s forehead and it’s as if he drove a bulldozer through a concrete wall inside Quentin’s mind - he’s flooded with a thousand memories in seconds, like watching a child’s flip book behind his eyes. Taking the entrance exam with Julia, both of them hopping around like happy idiots when they were admitted; meeting Eliot, and Alice, and even Penny; sitting in class watching the professor make objects float; being frozen by the Beast; his expulsion; Eliot promising to find and seduce him- “Holy _shit_ ,” he breathes, catching Eliot’s arm and holding him there. “ _Eliot_.”

“Welcome back, darling,” Eliot says. “Sorry this isn’t quite the reunion I promised, with the spirit-lifting seduction and all.”

“There’s still time,” Quentin replies, his cheeks flushing at his boldness. “My life could use a little sparkle.”

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Absence has made your heart grow fonder, or at least hornier,” he says. “I like it. But first, where is everyone?”

As if on cue, Alice stumbles in from the kitchen. She’s moving strangely - jerking and hesitant - and Quentin wonders for a second if zombies are real, too, and no one ever bothered to tell him. Her hair is a tangled, matted mess, and it’s impossible to tell what color her dress is supposed to be. It’s too soaked in still-wet stains of something dark red.

Quentin recoils when he realizes it’s blood.

“They’re all gone. For good.” Alice’s voice is quiet and quavers, like she’s Samson post-haircut and all her strength has been drained. 

Eliot’s eyebrows draw together, a tiny wrinkle forming between them. “They’re staying in Fillory?”

Alice shakes her head. Her eyes are red and wet, blue orbs floating in a sea of blood and tears, and her entire body is trembling. Quentin is reminded, half-hysterically, of his old neighbor’s chihuahua who’d quiver and pee every time someone rang the doorbell.

“Their _bodies_  are staying in Fillory. The Beast... it was waiting for us, knew we were coming somehow. It slaughtered them all the minute we crossed over. We couldn’t fight - we couldn’t _move_  - it was just there, and then they were... meat.”

Eliot sinks to the bottom stair, slowly, his long limbs seeming to fold in on themselves origami-style until he looks infinitely smaller, like a frightened bird. “Margo?”

“She was the first to fall.”

He starts shaking, violently; he’s a fish who’s been hauled out of the sea and is flopping and gasping on the shore, desperately trying to keep breathing in a hostile, alien world. Quentin sits beside him, an arm tight around his shoulders, trying in vain to hold him together.

Alice, too lost in her own shock to notice Eliot’s condition, plows on. “Margo actually got off relatively easy; she was just tossed against a rock until her head cracked. But Penny…the Beast chopped off his hands. The sounds he made - the screams - and the way he flopped on the ground; there was just _so much blood_. I’m not even sure whether he bled to death or drowned in it. And then Julia...” Alice’s face turns somehow even paler, like she hasn’t just seen a ghost but is in the process of actively _becoming_  one. “The Beast turned Julia inside out. Literally. I saw her spleen.”

“Jesus,” Quentin mutters, feeling like someone has disemboweled him, or removed a lung. Like he’s been wounded in a way far beyond his body’s ability to heal. 

He thinks he’s going to be sick, or maybe pass out; he wishes he’d stayed in the asylum, alone and oblivious, after all.

Alice shakes her head, like she’s trying to clear the images away but knows that she never will. “I’m the only one that made it back. I thought I was going to be okay, because the Beast.. it did something and I could move again. I should have known…I could feel it, that there was something else, another spell, one that _attached_  to me, somehow. But I didn’t recognize it, and I felt okay at first, and I was so scared. So I ran.”

A tear slips down her cheek; she doesn’t bother to wipe it away, doesn’t even seem to realize it’s there. “I came back here to research it, to find out what he did to me… and it turns out I’m cursed. Radioactive, or diseased, I’m not sure; I can’t pin down the particulars just yet. I just know that I'm something like a magical Typhoid Mary crossed with a human Chernobyl disaster.”

She chews her chapped lip; it splits at the corner, her flesh raw and pink beneath it. “Just being near me, even for only for a second, is lethal. This whole place - it’s become a death trap. The Beast used me to poison it. And now he's got you, too.”

Quentin can’t help it; he scrambles up a step and pulls Eliot with him, instinctively trying to get them further away from her. 

He immediately feels like a dick.

Alice doesn’t notice, though; her gaze is a universe away, like she’s staring at some vital part of her that got stuck back in Fillory. Maybe it did.

“It’s why I put that spell on the door,” she continues. “To try to stop anyone else from coming in. I know it wasn’t much, but it was the only thing I had time for, all the energy I had left.”

“Alice…” Quentin has no idea what he’s going to say. It doesn’t matter; she doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’d never have come back here if I’d known.”

“Of course not,” Eliot finally murmurs. “It’s not your fault. This is just what the Beast is. Destruction. Death. Should have known it was always going to end this way.”

His voice sounds flat and opaque, like it’s stripped of any emotion. Except, Quentin realizes, that’s not it at all - the complete opposite, really. Eliot’s _so_  overwhelmed that none of his feelings can be separated out and identified, like that time in art therapy when Quentin had tried to mix blue and green and brown paint but he’d fucked it up and they’d swirled into some dark, drab, blackish color that swallowed all the individual hues.

Every vibrant, beautiful thing about Eliot is being consumed by this.

Alice covers her mouth and coughs; when she pulls her hands away, they’re spattered with blood. “I’m already sick. I need to go lie down. I just can’t-“

“Of course,” Quentin says, standing to move out of her way. He watches her slowly climb the stairs with a tight grip on the handrail, tendons visible through her thin, pale skin.

Eliot, hardly able to hold himself upright, somehow staggers to the bar, grabs a bottle and glass, and makes his way upstairs. When he passes Quentin, it’s obvious that the pain is nearly drowning him, that he’s barely able to hold his head above it, breath choking and hiccuping - and that he’s going to let himself sink beneath it all as soon as he has even the illusion of privacy in his room. 

Quentin, wisely, lets him go. For a little while, anyway.

And Quentin actually feels...okay. Which doesn’t seem right, not at all, that he’s the one having the even-keeled, level-headed, mature emotional response to something. He must be in shock. Yeah. Or those drugs from the hospital are still bathing his brain in delicious happy chemicals. Something. 

Still, he feels, if not alright, then at least functional. Like there are things that need doing. Practical, sensible things, such as dragging the table in front of the door to barricade it and enchanting a paper airplane to tell Fogg what happened. He’ll need to inform their families, to burn or bury or otherwise obliterate their bodies and the entire Physical Cottage.

Quentin is surprised at how little remorse he feels about his imminent death. Maybe it’s because so many of his friends are already gone, and the last few will die with him. Maybe it’s because he’s lived with the idea of his own death in his head as part of his depression for so long that it’s no longer something to fear.

He’s grateful for it, whatever the reason. This is one thing he’s not going to overanalyze.

The last few words of Quentin’s letter to the Dean squiggle a bit, and he drops the pen.

Is that tremble in his hands the disease taking hold already? Or is it just the shock again, of finally coming home and remembering everyone, only to lose everything?

He decides it doesn’t matter. If he’s only got hours left, he knows exactly how he wants to spend them.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, he finds Eliot, with bloodshot eyes and fresh tear tracks shining on his cheeks, lying on his bed with a cigarette half-forgotten between his long fingers, ash falling on the blanket. 

And he’s drinking.

Heavily.

“I don’t want to talk about… anything,” Eliot says. “I just want to forget, as much as possible, and then go be with Bambi.”

“Good. I don’t want to talk either.” Quentin lifts the glass of bourbon from Eliot’s hand and tosses it the remainder of it back in one burning swallow, then moves the bottle to Eliot’s dresser on the far side of the room. “Hey,” he tries, with an awkward attempt at a smile. “It, uh, it looks like it’s going to be our last day on Earth. Got any ideas about what you want to do with it?”

Eliot tilts his head, and lifts a questioning eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me, Q?”

Quentin swallows, hard. “What if I was?”

And Eliot’s across the room in two long strides, Quentin in his arms, their mouths crashing together in a kiss that’s nearly violent. It’s all teeth and tongue and desperation, groping hands and pulling hair, fear and despair channeling into all-consuming, frenzied passion.

Eliot backs him up against the dresser so hard that the bourbon bottle wobbles and falls, smashing into a postmodernist composition of glass shards and liquor across the floor.

They don’t even notice. They’re too busy discovering the only good thing about Quentin's hospital-issued clothes and shoes - they come off _quickly_.

Eliot’s, on the other hand, are all buttons and knots and buckles and zippers, and Quentin knows that if they were going to live longer than a few hours he’d be fastidiously careful with every garment, but they’re not. So Quentin just yanks; buttons fly off Eliot’s shirt like confetti out of a party popper, pinging against the headboard and walls and rolling across the floor.

Eliot tosses Quentin back onto the bed and gives him zero time to prepare before he’s got his mouth on Quentin’s already-hard cock, practically swallowing it down.

“Holy fuck,” Quentin half-shouts, fisting his hands in the soft white sheets, and squeezing his eyes shut.

Because this is already the best feeling he’s ever had, white-hot pleasure burning through his body like a lightning strike, and if he looks down at Eliot’s perfect mouth wrapped around him, his tongue swirling around the head of Quentin’s cock before sucking like a damned Dyson, he’s going to lose it.

And he is definitely not ready for this to be over. Not now, maybe not ever.

“El,” he groans, twisting his fingers into Eliot’s curls.

“Hmm?” Eliot hums in answer, knowing how the sound will vibrate across Quentin’s skin, and Quentin can _feel_  his smug smile around his dick.

“Oh, ummm, uh,” he mumbles, trying to remember how to speak. “You gotta, you gotta stop, or I’m going to-“

Eliot pulls off, only to trace the flat of his tongue over the vein running from base to tip. “That’s the idea,” he murmurs, his lips fluttering softly over the sensitive skin.

“Not yet,” Quentin says, finally finding a bit of composure and tugging until he brings Eliot’s face up to his. “If this is the only chance we’ve got, I want it all. I want everything.”

Eliot reaches down to cup his balls gently, then traces a finger over the cleft of Quentin’s ass. “You’re sure?”

Quentin just crushes their mouths together.

Somehow, lube finds its way to the bed. Quentin assumes it’s through magic; he’s quickly becoming convinced that _everything_  about Eliot is magic.

Just like how Eliot’s already found the sensitive spot where his neck and shoulder meet and is doing some clever trick with his mouth that’s making Quentin’s toes curl. Or how he nibbles on Quentin’s ear, his breath hot and loud as he exhales, and it officially becomes Quentin’s new favorite sound. Or how Eliot is somehow staying propped over him, despite having one hand on Quentin’s cock and the other slowly working him open.

Too slowly.

Fingers threaded through Eliot’s hair, Quentin pulls his face back to his. “Hurry up,” he growls, and bites Eliot’s bottom lip.

“Maybe I want this to last, too,” Eliot says, but he picks up the pace.

And it’s only a minute later when Quentin’s groaning, pleading, “Now,” between kisses on Eliot’s neck. “Please, _now_."

They don’t bother with a condom; they aren’t going to live long enough for it to be an issue. So it’s just Eliot, slicked up and pushing into Quentin with a hiss, arms shaking with the strain of going slow, of holding himself still until Quentin can adjust.

Everything’s too sweet and full and _much_ , and Quentin feels like he might burst like an overripe fruit. But when he can finally breathe again, and touches Eliot’s hip to urge him to move, Eliot rocks and shifts his position until he finds just the right angle, and _there_.

It’s like Quentin’s blood has turned to champagne, fizzing through his veins and drowning his brain until it finally shuts the fuck up for once. It’s like he’s made of air and flesh and magic all at once; it swallows him whole, it burns him from the inside, it hollows out his bones and makes him light enough to fly.  

And oh, _god_ , Quentin never knew he could feel like this. Real and bare and delicious; playing hopscotch on the edge of a cliff, with the world reduced to simple skin and heat and movement. Eliot’s above him and in him and surrounding him, rivulets of sweat running down his chest, and the only sounds are deliciously filthy - slapping flesh, panting breath, and groans that Quentin honestly can't determine which one of them are making.  

There’s nothing but this, but them, Quentin’s body dancing along the razor’s edge of pleasure and pain, Eliot staring down at him in wonder, his cheeks flushed, curls sticking to his sweat-slicked forehead. 

It’s too much; it’ll never be enough.

All Quentin knows is that he’s never felt anything even _close_  to this, and he’ll never have the chance to feel it again.

Eliot’s pace quickens and becomes a bit sloppy, losing its careful control. Quentin’s breath is coming ragged and harsh, his whole body a coiled spring, a live wire, and when Eliot tenses, spilling inside him, it’s enough to push Quentin over the edge.

And when he comes, like drowning and burning and dying and being reborn, he does some kind of magic that he didn’t even know existed. It conjures fiery white lights, like thousands of fireflies made of tiny sparklers that rain from the ceiling, drifting like glittering snow into a blanket across the floor, reflecting off the glass shards and spilled bourbon. 

“Well, that’s new and intriguing,” Eliot muses when he can finally speak again. He flops onto his back, pulling Quentin over to curl against his chest.

The lights reflect in Eliot’s dark eyes, off the shine of his hair and the sheen on his skin.

He’s the most beautiful thing Quentin will ever see.

“Yeah,” Quentin says, his heart so full it aches. “It really is.”

And he’s not meaning the lights, not at all. 

* * *

They start to feel it as soon as the afterglow wanes. The burning, blistering of their skin,the tremors wracking their limbs, the fluid quickly filling their lungs.

(Quentin knows, somehow, that Alice is already gone, but he doesn’t let himself think about it.) 

“I’m sorry we lost, Q. I’m sorry we didn’t get more time,” Eliot says, gasping a bit.

Quentin shakes his head, or tries to. He’s starting to lose control over his basic motor skills. “You never know. Magic is real, Fillory exists, and we fell for each other - which means that impossible things happen every day. So, maybe, somehow, everyone is going to be okay, and you and I are going to get another chance.”

Eliot smiles and exhales, closing his eyes. Quentin hears the last weak thud of his heart.

Somewhere in the distance, Jane resets the loop. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from Frightened Rabbit's "The Woodpile." <3


End file.
